No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Cisco XDR vs Rapid7 InsightIDR comparison

Why PeerSpot?
Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
122
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Cisco XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Rapid7 InsightIDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
20th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (22nd), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (11th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (32nd), Threat Deception Platforms (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 4.7%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco XDR is 1.5%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rapid7 InsightIDR is 2.4%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks4.7%
Cisco XDR1.5%
Rapid7 InsightIDR2.4%
Other91.4%
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Gained full visibility and streamlined threat detection through behavior-based insights and AI integration
Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth. We have fine-tuned our security policies and allowed different levels of policies to get rid of those false positives. Currently, we are getting a fairly good amount of incidents that are not false positives or benign, but actionable items. The process is streamlined. In the initial days, the operations used to get involved in a lot of benign and other activities, but now the process is streamlined. We are leveraging the auto-detection and remediation plans. The operations teams are now more involved in other business roles as well, not just looking into the logs and fetching out what's happening there. They have fixed a lot of things. Initially, they didn't have IAC code drift detection, cloud posture management, or security posture management, but they have those now. They purchased different vendors and did a merger with that. They have now Prisma Cloud that gets integrated and now they are working with Cortex Cloud. Everything that was negative has now been addressed, and the product altogether looks to be in a very better and mature shape now. Currently, it's more or less detecting the workloads with AI-based best practices. Since most organizations are consuming AI agents and other things, we are looking forward to seeing what other feature enhancements Palo Alto can support in that.
Fred Parks - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Consultant at W.C. Bradley Co.
Centralized visibility has transformed incident investigations and now cuts response time dramatically
Workflows could definitely be easier to work with. Workflows are automated tasks that can be kicked off inside of a playbook. When someone is responding to something, they can click a button and it will perform automated tasks for them inside of these other products. The product can actually control the behavior of a firewall and you can write a rule in a firewall from Cisco XDR without having to go into the firewall software. However, if it is not a native workflow automation, it is very difficult to create your own. It is not intuitive and you almost have to be a developer and get really good with the API. This could definitely be improved on, particularly the custom workflow automation. Another thing that could be improved is Cisco documenting how it makes decisions, because there are certain factors or criteria that it uses from the source products. Cisco XDR gets all of its data from the integrations, so if you do not integrate anything, it is not going to do anything. Sometimes in these integration products, such as Secure Network Analytics or Cisco Security Exposure, they could be generating some type of alert and you do not necessarily see that in Cisco XDR. This is because it knows, maybe because of these other products, it is not really a big deal and is not big enough to raise an incident. However, I do not think Cisco does a great job in explaining what those rules are, such as why this happens and how this happens. This can cause some questions and some concern. I think it is doing the right thing, but I think it would be better if they had a rule set to say, based on this data, this is how the product actually works.
Prajwal Chougale - PeerSpot reviewer
SOC L2 Analyst at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Centralized threat hunting has improved alert accuracy and simplifies incident investigations
I would say there are two areas for improvement: the reporting dashboard that provides insights or reports weekly or monthly lacks detailed information about how logs are being ingested. While the details are there, they could be more concise and easier to understand for any level of authority. The second area is alert tuning; compared to Microsoft Sentinel, Rapid7 InsightIDR provides fewer alerts with more static alert functionality and lacks dynamic alerting exposures. There could be improvements to learn from past alert activities for more dynamic alert configurations. These two areas are the main areas for improvement; everything else is good.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It is an easy-to-use tool."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks has given us better endpoint visibility and richer investigation context, allowing us to identify suspicious activity, understand the attack path, and contain potential threats much faster than before."
"The policy configuration is great, the granularity of policies that are available is very helpful, it is straightforward to set up, and it has pretty much everything we need and works well within the Palo Alto ecosystem."
"Cortex XDR can integrate the firewalls and determine the tendencies of the attacks. It's a new generation antivirus, with protection endpoints and detection response. It is very easy to use and everybody can operate the solution."
"The anti-exploit is impenetrable. We chose Traps because it is the only product that we were not able to get anything past."
"It is a simple platform to use."
"The user interface of the solution is sophisticated and straightforward."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks should be a stable solution."
"Cisco XDR is one of the most matured systems available."
"Technical support from Cisco is good and very helpful."
"Cisco XDR is appreciated as a SaaS-based platform for its user-friendliness with simple management tools that are easy for configuration."
"Overall, the platform has strengthened our cybersecurity posture and increased operational efficiency for the security team."
"I have seen a measurable ROI after implementing Cisco XDR, as my SOC team reduced manual investigation and triage effort by nearly 40 to 50%, which significantly improved analyst productivity and reduced response time for critical incidents."
"Since implementing Cisco XDR, our organization has improved its incident response process and overall SOC visibility."
"Cisco XDR has positively impacted our organization by providing faster detection of complex threats, reducing alert fatigue, and giving us better visibility."
"My advice for other organizations considering Cisco XDR is that it offers proactive security measures that are really very helpful."
"The solution's initial setup is easy."
"Rapid7's reporting is more robust than Tenable's."
"Enables the use of honey pots, honey users, and honey files to monitor for suspicious patterns."
"I rate Rapid7 nine out of 10 for affordability"
"The log aggregation and storage provided by InsightIDR has shown no issues with scalability; aggregating over one hundred millions events daily."
"InsightIDR has allowed us to find potential security issues that we did not know existed, and get remediation quickly."
"I have seen that Rapid7 InsightIDR provides security to the networks and endpoints in the company."
"We were able to identify criminals attempting to login from China and put a stop on their IP locations."
 

Cons

"Basically, they don't provide customer support tools just to investigate the logs."
"There are some third-party solutions that are difficult to integrate with, which is something that can be improved."
"This is a very costly product."
"Based on our experience so far, its implementation is quite complex."
"Being able to filter the events to see those that are related to the actual alert would save time spent by the engineer."
"I think Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could be improved by having tiered pricing by device, especially since we have not covered mobile devices because the cost is very high."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks can improve mobile integration to allow access to the console."
"The MAC agent is not as robust feature-wise as the PC version."
"While Cisco XDR is robust, it could benefit from improvements on the AI side."
"I would say I got to stop beta testing myself."
"Cisco XDR could improve the UI customization experience."
"If we have a list of domains we need to block, such as 4,000 domains, I can only block 100 domains at a time because if I put in more than 100 domains, I hit that 2,000 character max and can't continue with an investigation. Being able to put in all 4,000 domains, without a character limit or observable limit, would make doing those case books a whole lot easier and blocking those domains a whole lot easier too."
"One area where Cisco XDR could improve is the learning curve for new users, especially during initial setup and workflow customization."
"Workflows could definitely be easier to work with."
"They need to provide better pricing and bundle XDR licenses with products like Meraki solutions or Firepower Threat Defense."
"My only complaint about Cisco XDR is related to licensing, which is complicated."
"One thing that springs to mind is easier API integration with ITSMs. We are evaluating a new ITSM and I would like to have InsightIDR create a ticket when an attack is identified, and the ticket would be closed in InsightIDR when the ITSM resolution is completed. This would take out the "single point of failure" we currently have, if the email recipient is somehow absent, in recording the risk appetite for the incident and the actions taken to mitigate or not."
"The interface for doing investigation needs to be enhanced with minor improvements that would make it more useful."
"I would like to see more development in InsightIDR towards building their SIEM solution and converting it to XDR."
"It would be useful to import threat intelligence in YARA format along with known incorrect email addresses.​"
"The main problem lies in the processes within the client's operating systems."
"If we pitch Rapid7 InsightIDR against solutions such as SIEMs from Splunk or LogRhythm, it is not as customizable as a SIEM solution is."
"I'd like to be able to get the compliance report within the solution which is currently not possible."
"Sometimes, it is hard to get the right queries to use. Currently, the tool lacks a pre-made set of queries."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It has a yearly renewal."
"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is an expensive solution."
"The return on investment is from the user side because we have seen the performance of it increase the delivery time of the product if we are using too many web-based and on-premise applications. In indirect ways, we saw the return of investment in terms of performance and user satisfaction increase."
"Cortex XDR's pricing is ok."
"I don't have any issues with the pricing. We are satisfied with the price."
"If one wishes to work with another team or large number of users at a future point, he must purchase a license for them."
"Our license will require renewal in August, after which the maintenance will continue as usual."
"The licensing of Cisco XDR is a bit complicated. The cost can depend on what it is, and the process can be a little complicated."
"​Accurately predict your licensing counts as this is a subscription based product.​"
"It is a reasonably priced solution."
"Licensing is by endpoint and amount of retention time (at least ours is). Default retention was one year, but we are able to push the retention further if needed. There's also a provide-your-own-S3 option for longer retention if you don't want to pay for the additional retention years in your Rapid7 agreement."
"The pricing is good, and it is not very expensive."
"I rate Rapid7 InsightIDR's price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR charges us based on the endpoints we connect to."
"It is more reasonably priced than other vendors."
"​I am sure that there are cheaper products out there, but none that meet so many of our needs whilst maintaining stability and usability.​"
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions are best for your needs.
921,148 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
24%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise57
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. Sentinel One
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks. ...
Comparing CrowdStrike Falcon to Cortex XDR (Palo Alto)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions th...
How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface,...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco XDR?
The centralized visibility, automation, and reduction in investigation time have provided good operational value for ...
What needs improvement with Cisco XDR?
Cisco XDR could improve the UI customization experience. Some workflows still feel more complex than they need to be,...
What is your primary use case for Cisco XDR?
We mainly use Cisco XDR for centralized threat detection and incident investigation, especially for correlating endpo...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rapid7 InsightIDR?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been very positive; it is cost-effective and offers great ...
What needs improvement with Rapid7 InsightIDR?
I would say there are two areas for improvement: the reporting dashboard that provides insights or reports weekly or ...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
No data available
InsightIDR
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Information Not Available
Liberty Wines, Pioneer Telephone, Visier
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco XDR vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
921,148 professionals have used our research since 2012.